Mobile communication systems continue to grow in popularity and have become an integral part of both personal and business communications. Various mobile devices now incorporate Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) features such as calendars, address books, task lists, calculators, memo and writing programs, media players, games, etc. These multi-function devices also allow users to send and receive electronic mail (email) messages wirelessly and access the Internet via a cellular network and/or a wireless local area network (WLAN), for example. In addition, these devices may allow users to send Short Messaging Service (SMS) messages, Personal Identification Number (PIN) messages, and instant messages.
Given the amount of information now stored on a mobile device itself, and the amount of data remotely accessible by the mobile device, a user may wish to search for a specific e-mail, media file, or contact, for example. To facilitate this, some mobile devices include search functionality. They may allow a user to search for a specific contact, for e-mails from a given sender, or for songs by a certain performing artist.
This search functionality is typically associated a given application. For example, a user may open a list of his contacts, and search that list of contacts, or may open a list of his music files, and search that list of music files. While such functionality advantageously allows a user to locate data more quickly than without a search function, further improvements in how a mobile device searches, and presents the results of, both its own content and external content may be desirable.